Self-Discrepancy Theory

The structure of the self and negative emotions

The human self is an interesting creation. We experience the world as a single self, with a bounded existence and awareness nested in space and time. I'm sitting in my backyard typing this post, and there is just one of me sitting here—or at least, that's how I experience it.

But at the same time, we hold a multiplicity of self-conceptions, or cognitive models of different selves. The great William James described this multiplicity of selves in the first psychology textbook, The Principles of Psychology, at the twilight of the 19th century. For example, we each have different social selves in our social roles: I am a different person in front of a classroom than when hanging out with friends. I can even tell when I accidentally fall into “professor self” with my friends because I start getting manic and people’s eyes start to glaze over.

There are also a variety of what James called possible selves. For example, we can think about who we might be in 20 years, or who we could become next month if we changed our lives completely, or who we could’ve been if we’d made different decisions along the way (aka a counterfactual self). Importantly, these possible selves are tied into our emotional—or affective—systems. For example, if I think to myself, “I could have been a contender”, I am going to feel sadness or loss for the self I could have been.

Two of these possible selves, known as the ideal self and the ought self, have been directly tied to negative emotions and even clinical outcomes.

This idea has a long history in psychology. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud talked about the ego ideal, which he later theoretically transformed into the more familiar superego. The ego ideal isn’t exactly the same as the ideal self—but the idea that a discrepancy between who you are and some internalized ideal is linked to emotion was there.

In the 1950s and 60s humanistic psychologist Carl Rodgers talked directly about discrepancies in the self-system, often between who a client was and who they ideally wanted to be. This concept of self-discrepancy was crucial to humanistic psychotherapy and, of course, eventual self-actualization. Part of self-actualization is growing into your ideal self.

These ideas entered experimental social psychology beginning with the work of Tory Higgins in the 1980s. (And, if my memory from UW Madison still serves, Tim Strauman was the psychologist who took these ideas in a more clinical direction.)

To define some terms: the actual self is how you see and describe yourself now. This could include your personality traits, your physical self, your possessions, your social group, your career, or how you dress. You could also describe who you ideally want to be—that's the ideal self. I like to think of the ideal self as the person you would capture on a vision board. For me, it is somebody happier, kinder and more loving, wealthier, more fit, living somewhere with better weather and salt water, and under a little less stress.

Finally, the ought self is the self you think you should be—who you are obligated to be, or have a duty to be. This is often associated with values from society, your parents, or your community. So your ought self might be someone who has had more grandchildren, or is a doctor (and by that I mean physician, not PhD in psychology), or someone in a relationship, or whatever that internalized representation of social pressure is—often magnified through a parental figure. (My Mom always wanted me to be a physician, for example, so that is still a bit of an ought self for me).

The actual self, the ideal self, and the ought self are all somewhat different, and the discrepancies between them are theoretically related to affect or emotion. That’s an academic way of saying: if I look at myself in the mirror and then look at my vision board, and there’s a big difference between the two, I’m going to feel sad and dissatisfied. Or, if I look in the mirror and remember that my mom is coming over that afternoon and she’s going to ask me about my med school application, I’m going to feel a little stressed out.

So the idea put forward in Self-Discrepancy Theory was that the discrepancy between the actual and ideal self, and the actual and ought self, would be related to negative emotions—with greater discrepancy linked to more negative emotion. Further, the theory proposed that the difference between the actual and ideal self would be more associated with sadness or dejection, while the discrepancy with the ought self would be more associated with anxiety-related emotions—like stress or fear.

There are several ways to measure self-discrepancy. One is more individualized or idiographic: you ask people to list the attributes of their actual self and then the attributes of their ideal or ought self. For example, I might say my actual self is a little lazy and prone to procrastination, and my ideal self is laser-focused, disciplined, and hardworking. Another way is more standardized or nomothetic: you ask people to rate themselves as they actually are and how they would like to be on pre-selected attributes—like workplace performance, relationships, physical appearance, etc.—and then measure the size of the discrepancy.

Neither of these approaches is inherently better—they’re just capturing the idea in slightly different ways. And there are several approaches that involve an ideographic step combined with a nomothetic step. Something like the Q-sort developed by Jack Block and described by Carl Rogers is an example.

Does Self-Discrepancy Theory hold up? After almost half a century of research, there is evidence that it does, sort of. Consistent with the theory, there is a clear association between the size of the discrepancy between the actual and ideal or ought self and negative emotions. So, having a large gap between who you are and who you want to be or ought to be feels bad.

These effects are moderate in size: you find a meta-analytic correlation of r = .25 with self-discrepancy and psychopathology (e.g., depression, anxiety symptoms) and r = .19 with negative affect.

Where the theory didn’t hold up as well was in the specificity of emotions. Discrepancy predicted negative affect in general, but didn’t really differentiate anxiety from depression-related emotions.

The association of self-discrepancy with feeling bad isn’t necessarily bad. For example, if one holds high moral standards (ought self) and fails to live up to them, feeling bad might be a useful reminder to get back on track. Either that, or you do some serious self-inquiry and try to understand why you have that specific ought self—do you really want to keep it? Or would you prefer to revise it closer to your actual self?

Likewise, I think it’s useful to have a clear vision of who you ideally want to be. Having a strong vision of your ideal self can serve as a useful guide to becoming the person you want to be, even if the price is occasional disappointment or self-criticism. And of course, you can always do some self-reflection and see whether that ideal self needs to be recalibrated and maybe dialed back a bit. The ideal self is not written in stone—it’s literally just a self-concept or mental abstraction.

A lot of times in life, you shoot for the stars, settle for the moon (or whatever the old saying is), and it turns out pretty well. And even if it doesn’t, you still stepped into the arena instead of watching life from the cheap seats. It reminds me of the old Garcia/Hunter tune Run for the Roses:

Reach for the sun, catch hold of the moon
They're both too heavy but what can you do?
Reach for the stars, smack into the sky
You don't want to live but you're chicken to die
Oh, you're chicken to die

Links to my work: Homepage; Peterson Academy; Books on Amazon

Some Citations

Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045357

Higgins, E. T. (1987). Self-discrepancy: a theory relating self and affect. Psychological review, 94(3), 319.

Higgins, E. T., Klein, R., & Strauman, T. (1985). Self-concept discrepancy theory: A psychological model for distinguishing among different aspects of depression and anxiety. Social cognition, 3(1), 51-76.

Mason, T. B., Smith, K. E., Engwall, A., Lass, A., Mead, M., Sorby, M., ... & Wonderlich, S. (2019). Self-discrepancy theory as a transdiagnostic framework: A meta-analysis of self-discrepancy and psychopathology. Psychological bulletin, 145(4), 372.

Pelham, B. W., & Swann, W. B. (1989). From self-conceptions to self-worth: on the sources and structure of global self-esteem. Journal of personality and social psychology, 57(4), 672.